10 January 2009

Finished short story?

So, I've got some writing goals for the year. 1: Finish 4 short stories and submit them for publication. 2: Get NBR ready to query.

I have Seeds of Rebellion, 6900 words, awaiting crit from my writing group. I think the last thousand words or so need some editing and revision, especially the ending, but I'll get some peer opinions.

I'm working on the ghosts/trains story now. I think I need to change it to third person (it's currently first) to make it work better. It reads more like a memoir/diary than how I want it to be. But it stands at 1600 words, with some outlining of the whole thing so I know where it's going. I'm still stewing on the POV change, though.

No idea yet what the other 2 will be. I'm pondering a children's story version of part of the ghosts one, with the setting changed. There's a creepy bit of history regarding a part of the Spree River and the Berlin Wall and kids drowning because the West German fire department couldn't go in (jurisdiction and stuff) and the East German *wouldn't.* Soviet-era Germany was a strange, sad place.

NBR has about 30000 words typed up, the skeleton of the story (though I have 2 chapters yet to type up from the handwritten draft). The first chapter is reasonably polished, but that leaves 28 to go. It's gonna be exciting. I hope I can get my act together and finish it. That's why I give myself targets.